Visual C++ installed twice

Question

I notced that I had two different msdia80.dll files on my computer.  One in the right directory (C:\program files(x86)\common files\microsoft shared\vc\ and one in the c:\ directory.  I learned that this was a dll file that installs with microsoft visual c++.  So I went to my programs and features and sure enough there was two different c++ installations, but I wasnt sure if I could delete one or not because I'm running 64 bit vista and there was x64 and x86 versions of visual c++ 2005 redistributable and two versions of visual c++ 2005 ATL update KB973923 (64 bit and 32 bit).  So my question is should I uninstall the x86 c++ and atl update or does c++ need both versions to run?  Thank you for the help.

Regards

Answer 1

Hi Racem22,

Thank you for visiting Microsoft Windows Vista answers forum.

Microsoft Visual C++ is Microsoft's IDE product for the C, C++, and C++/CLI programming languages. Visual C++ 2008 provides a powerful and flexible development environment for creating Microsoft Windows–based and Microsoft .NET–based applications. The reason that there are both 32 bit and 64 bit version of this software on the computer is for the compatibility, when running 32 bit programs that require it.

It is not recommended to remove Microsoft Visual C++ and its related updates as they run in the background as scripts require them to run on startup.

I will suggest you not to remove them from the computer.

Please let us know if it helps.

Thanks and Regards,

Santosh